Silent Wind
by cailynnknabenshue
Summary: Anabelle Carter, one of the prettiest, most popular girl at Plainville High School, was murdered. Her twin sister and two best friends must work together to find the culprit. Are they ready to find out the truth... about Anabelle? About themselves?


Plainville, Kansas. Population: 1,903. A relatively quiet town, everyone knew everything about everyone. The owner of the butcher shop was invited to the gardener's daughter's fourteenth birthday party; it was just how the community operated.

Annabelle Carter, a sixteen year old, went to bed on November 14th and would be found dead the next morning with a knife protruding from her chest.

One of the school's so-called "popular girls" in the junior class, Annabelle had what she wanted. The quarterback of the football team boyfriend, captain of the cheerleading squad, a closet the size of her room and friends who glorified her every move.

So who killed her?

Such a question would be asked in the minds of the entire town that morning. The school hallways once bustling with the usual drama would be silenced, happy greetings from passersby on the streets turned instead to silent mourns for the Annabelle and her family.

Her twin sister, Jessie, stayed home that morning, not wanting to hear the condolences of the town. Her best friend was no longer with her to spend the nights huddling around the computer and a bowl of popcorn, watching Netflix until the first rays of sunlight shone through Annabelle's purple bedroom curtains and the rooster that lived on the family farm signaled the dawn of a new day.

The twins did everything together. Most of their firsts, first "teenage party," first kiss, first alcoholic drink, first cigarette smoked and first time being drunk, were experienced together. The details of other, more intimate firsts such as first kisses, first boyfriends, and their "first-times" were explicitly shared, with no minute detail unrevealed.

Jessie received numerous phone calls from that day forth, from the twins' friend group (the "popular clan"), other classmates she didn't even realize existed, family members, and multiple other people in the town. The only calls she answered were the ones from her closest friends, who knew her and Annabelle almost as well as they knew themselves. At one point in the day she had over 100 missed calls, 30 voicemails and 134 unread text messages.

Left alone with her thoughts, Jessie was determined to discover who could have had any motive to murder her best friend. It wasn't the fact that she was a cruel person. Quite the contrary, Annabelle Carter was the sweetest girl in the city, she genuinely cared about everyone, despite the fact that she was popular. She defied the stereotype that popular high school girls wouldn't talk to people they considered below their rank. She spent her weekends volunteering at the Animal Shelter and the local hospital, and cared for her friends more than she cared for herself sometimes.

Naturally, many people were intimidated by Annabelle. Her beach-blonde hair, green eyes, model height, and impeccable fashion sense were enough to make anyone who didn't act or look like her stand to the side of the hallway while she walked down the middle. Not that Jessie looked or acted any different, as they did everything together, but losing Annabelle was like losing half of everyone's favorite person.

Plainville High School was like any other high school in terms of social class. There were the nerds, the dorks, the jocks, the emos, the goths, the band geeks, the wannabes, the rich girls and the populars, among others. Now rich girls were typically part of the popular group, but not here. There were a few rich girls who were the sub-par populars. Annabelle's group, of course, were the most popular group in school, and, yes, all of them were rich.

The group that Annabelle left behind, she considered family, and her parents considered them extended family as well. Brinlee Asher, with her long red locks and her big brown eyes, was one of the group members who practically lived at the Carter's home. There were two girls in the twins' group who they were the closest to, and Brinlee was one of them. She was a model, so her fashion sense was very modern and it could be said that she was consistently up to date on all the fashion trends and was the trendiest of the group. Aside from that, she had the highest GPA in the school. Brains and beauty, that was Brinlee Asher.

The other member was Haylie Asher, a sporty, book-loving, intelligent girl. She had big brown eyes and short brown hair that naturally framed her face. A former club soccer player, sports had been at the center of her life ever since she could toddle. She, Brinlee, Jessie and Annabelle loved nothing more than to have sleepovers where they stayed up all hours of the night. Just as Jessie and Annabelle were inseparable, so were Brinlee and Haylie. The only difference was that Haylie and Brinlee were sisters, not twins.

Haylie was born on April 29th and Brinlee on October 22nd of the same year. Both girl's parents were divorced, and because Haylie and Brinlee had always spent an enormous amount of time together, Haylie's dad married Brinlee's mom, and, much to Haylie and Brinlee's excitement, they became step-sisters. But, because they felt so close to each other from the first day they met, they dropped the "step" and just called themselves sisters.

The three girls skipped school that day, and met up at the Carter residence, a three-story mansion of a farmhouse at the outer edge of town. However, because there were police and detectives swarming throughout the farm, the girls went to the Asher mansion instead. They were determined to discover what had happened, and who could have possibly wanted to kill one of the sweetest girls in Kansas.

By the end of the day, the girls had gone through eight pints of chocolate ice cream, seven boxes of Kleenex, and still had not come up with any possible leads. Sure, the Plainville Police Department had all of its lead investigators on the case, but the girls felt that they needed to do everything in their power to help out.


End file.
